Sunday, November 6, 2016

Mapping the Future of U.S. Transportation

Q: Some say Americans will never give up their cars. How do you create a mass transit system that appeals to Americans?

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx: Two of the largest groups in our society today are the boomers and the millennials. In some ways, they’re both looking for the same thing: to live closer to the central core of cities, where they don’t have to get in a car all the time. What our system hasn’t done is respond to those demographic changes. Out of our Highway Trust Fund, 80 cents on every dollar spent goes into our road system and only 20 cents goes into transit. For a country that is urbanizing, the way we pay for infrastructure doesn’t correlate. We need a more flexible funding approach at the federal, state, and local level that is demand-driven, not supply-side driven, and that responds to what people want. High-speed rail is going to be something people embrace as we see it happen in places like California and possibly Texas and Florida. The more it succeeds, the more people are going to want it where they live. That, coupled with fixed rail transit, bus transit, roads and highways, bike paths, and places for people to walk are going to give the people the choices they want.